


Addendum

by WellSlapMyAss-andCallMeShirley (TheAllpowerfulOZ)



Category: Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: Can be read as slash, Community: shkinkmeme, Hurt/Comfort, VERY SICK HOLMES, Victorian Medicine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-15 13:39:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8058478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAllpowerfulOZ/pseuds/WellSlapMyAss-andCallMeShirley
Summary: Kink Meme Fill for; http://shkinkmeme.livejournal.com/3747.html?thread=264867#t264867
Truthfully, the publication of 'The Empty House' lacked one frightening detail... Watson left this out for two reasons, one- to protect his dear friend, and two- the shame of what Watson himself nearly caused.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I liked the RichieVerse Holmes movies, but I never got into this fandom as much as it deserved. Maybe now that I've got my accounts up and running again that will change.

0-0-0 

0-0-0 

I was more than mildly concerned when Holmes did not answer my calls in the days following the conclusion of the case of The Empty House. It had been three days since I had seen him and during those three days I had been more than a bit unsettled and angry that he had hidden his survival from me for so long. The shock had worn off I suppose, and I found myself growing quite bitter toward him. Had he not understood what misery I had gone through, thinking his death was my own fault, that had I but been a few moments earlier I could have stopped him falling? I grew angry and spiteful and kept myself away from him for three days, and it took a note from a member of his band of street-children, this time a young girl in boys clothing with tangled braids stuffed beneath an old hat, and missing front teeth, to summon me to him. 

She said softly that she’d tried tossing pebbles at the window of his room as she had been told to do by Wiggins—who I soon discovered was working as a brick layer putting in the underground and in Holmes’s absence had taken to caring for the younger of the gang—news it seemed traveled fast. Wiggins, she explained, had instructed her to get Holmes’s attention and pass along a note to him that their loyalty had remained un-swayed by his supposed death. 

I could still recall Wiggins and Cartwright sitting side by side at the funeral trying to suppress tears, Wiggins twisting his hat and patting a young blonde boy beside him on the back in comfort.

And the girl—Anna—said that she’d tossed a whole handful of pebbles at the window but had not seen hair-nor-hide of Holmes, despite the fact she had been assured that Holmes would appear at the window and take the letter. 

That he had not appeared, worried not only Anna, but also myself. I bade the maid to help the poor child to wash her face and hands then offer some food while I finished with my last patient, then followed her at a respectable distance to Baker Street. 

Anna would not give me the letter, but remained adamant that she was supposed to see Holmes for herself and deliver it in person, that it had been stipulated by Wiggins himself so that irrefutable proof of his survival could be attained. 

Anna waited by the door twisting her fingers together while I went up to see Holmes myself.

I called out, tapping against the door to formally announce my presence, he undoubtedly already knew I was there. “Holmes, you’ve a caller down stairs, one of your Irregulars… Should I send her up?”

I received no answer, even when I called out and rapped my fist against the door more insistently. “Holmes.”

At the continued silence I found my key and let myself in. If I had been angry with Holmes the past three days, he was no doubt upset by my reaction and would purposefully ignore my presence unless I forced the matter.

I found the sitting room empty and under a thin layer of fine dust, as it had been before. There were the ashes and dead embers of a fire in the hearth, about two days old by my reckoning and an overturned tea cup on the rug, a dry brown stain beneath it. Mrs. Hudson would not be pleased about the damage to the rug and there I found another brown stain, on the arm of Holmes’s chair and a handkerchief crusted stiff with more of it, darker than tea. 

On the mantle, near the place he always pinned the post with his knife, there was yet another blot, this one in the shape of a hand. 

“Holmes?” I called as I picked up the handkerchief. The stain was rigid and crackled lightly between my fingers and when I sniffed realized it carried the scent of blood, more than that, it carried the scent of infection. 

Worry tore through me and I dropped the scrap of cloth back where I’d found it and went directly to the closed door of Holmes’s room, knocking sharply just seconds before letting myself in.

There I found him, lying on his bed, still fully dressed with a blanket curled over his shoulders and tangled about his legs. At first it seemed he was not breathing and his lips were unnaturally pale. It took but a moment to catch the movement of his chest, and once I noticed he was truly breathing I released a sigh of relief, thinking he was only in a state of cold prostration as was common for him after a case. Such prolonged activity without proper sustenance or rest wore on one’s body, even that of the great Sherlock Holmes.

The room carried the heavy scent of a sickroom and it was only once I’d reached his bedside that I noticed the hectic febrile flush to his cheeks and the fine weary tremors wracking his too thin frame. 

I laid a hand to his brow only to jerk it back again in shock at the heat he radiated. In that moment I completely forgot about Anne standing outside waiting for Holmes’s acknowledgement and instead gripped my friend by the arm and tried futilely to wake him. 

He appeared to be completely insensate even when I lightly struck his cheek and called his name loudly he remained entirely unresponsive. His lips were badly chapped and though the back of his neck was damp from sweat and his clothing smelled heavily of it, he was unnaturally dry. I remembered men in Afghanistan suffering similar symptoms, their bodies becoming so terribly dehydrated they developed fever and fell into delirium. I knew personally of four who died from it and two who only recovered because of my own and the other doctors’ diligence, aided with an extraordinarily deep well which gave forth blissfully cold water. 

I began quickly uncovering my friend, pulling away his blankets and found another dark stain, this time, on his clothes. He’d unbuttoned his waistcoat and his shirt was not tucked so it was quite easy to open as well, what I found beneath stole my breath and pulled a sharp cry of alarm from my lips.

There was a wound, a gunshot wound at that, at his waist on the right side. It was heavily bruised and badly inflamed, angry striations radiating outward from the centre like a little sun. What was worse, it was obviously days old and had wept a mixture of blood and pus through the bandaging, shirt, waistcoat and jacket to leave an ugly stain on the bed clothes. 

Cold fear shot through my belly and I imagined my friend coming into my office days before, the wound most likely only a few hours old. No wonder he had slept so soundly, he’d been in shock. He had even asked that I examine him, not once, but twice, and I had declined. I had denied him and he had asked implicitly for my help. 

“Never again, Holmes… never again,” I worked quickly and managed to remove the clothes from his upper body, unnerved by the sheer heat pooling off his slight frame, it was even greater around the wound itself, almost as if a fire were burning there beneath his flesh. 

Had Moran not been caught and awaiting the noose already I would have surely hunted him down myself for this. 

The wound was jagged about the edges which lead me to believe he had probed it for the bullet himself, most likely there in the very sitting room I’d just come from. I could only imagine him there in his chair before the fire trying to cut a bullet from his own flesh. I nearly wept for him so overwhelmed was I by guilt. I was unsure if he had been successful and could not wake him to ask. All my tools and instruments were back in my consulting room, I had nothing here and knew nothing of the condition of the instruments Holmes had borrowed from me over the years and hidden away. He could have everything I may need in this very room, but it could be so poorly kept that using it would kill him. I had no choice, I left Holmes long enough to fetch Anne from the front stoop, scratch quick instructions on a slip of paper from my notebook and send her off running down the street toward my home. I vowed to ensure the girl was rewarded handsomely for her swift pace as she disappeared faster than any boy from Holmes’s network I’d yet encountered and I returned myself up the stairs to Holmes’s side quickly. 

He had not so much as moved and lying there on his back with his upper body exposed and his injury continuing to weep sluggishly onto the sheet I could do nothing but wait and hope Anne returned quickly with my bag.

Anne though, did not return alone. It seems the poor child could not read a word I’d written and had gone to collect none other than Wiggins himself to aid her.

Wiggins had grown quite a lot since I’d last seen him, now a strapping young man with curling hairs on his chin he lifted my bag effortlessly in one hand and stared down at Holmes with a look of rapt horror on his pale slim face. There was a smudge of dirt on his nose and his hands were still grimy from work, no doubt he’d just been relieved of his duty for the evening and young Anne had caught him on his way.

Anne twisted her hands furiously and at the sight of Holmes’s injury made a noise of distress and left Baker Street entirely. 

Wiggins though, hardened himself to it and went about lighting the lamps and collecting them into what had at one time been my temporary consulting room but after I’d left to start my life with Mary, Holmes had turned it into a nest of sorts, long thin spider’s webs of ribbon and old news clippings pinned to the walls. 

That had all been cleared away, I was unsure if it had been Holmes or Mrs. Hudson to do it, but the changes had been recent for there was no dust on the flat surfaces therein. 

I sent Wiggins down stairs with a change of clothes and instructed him to wash himself so he could be of express assistance and he did just that, coming back looking quite strange and pale without the grime on him. He sat with Holmes and held pressure on the wound and I taught him quickly how to keep track of one’s heartbeat by gently pinching a vein in the side of the wrist. 

I cleaned what would be my makeshift surgery quickly with a bottle of antiseptic in my bag, and lit every lamp in the room. With Wiggins’s help, I managed to lift Holmes and carry him without jostling him too much. 

I was quickly becoming worried he may yet be beyond my aid for he made not a sound as he was shifted and laid out on the table and he only reacted minimally when I waved a glass of brandy under his nose. A grunt and a toss of his head and he was still once more, breathing labored, his pulse quick and weak in his throat.

I didn’t dare administer ether or chloroform for fear in his weakened state he may go under and never wake. Instead I draped a sheet over his lower half and worked his trousers off beneath it, mindful of Wiggins who blushed when he realized what I had done. 

Holmes, before that moment had remained entirely senseless, but the instant I had washed my hands and begun treating the wound he reacted, a low moan and he jerked back from me hands pushing defensively at my own. 

I tried unsuccessfully to calm him, but it seemed the more I spoke and tried to reassure him the more violent in his thrashing he became until I had to physically restrain him by pressing down hard on his shoulders and Wiggins across his knees. 

He was delirious, calling out in agonized tones, not even true words, just animal like cries of pain and outrage from his dry throat. His lips had begun to crack and bleed and the sight was unsettling, more so when his eyes opened, dark and heavily dilated despite the brightness of the room, looked right at me and I marked no recognition in his gaze, no focus, nothing that hinted at the sharp mind so incapacitated by the fever and sickness in his veins. 

I risked chloroform after that and tied a cloth over my mouth and nose. Instructed Wiggins to do the same and laid a scalpel to the wound in Holmes’s side. 

The first cut released a sluggish river of blood and infection and when pressure was applied to it the river became a flood. More than once I had to stop and step away to catch my breath over the smell of it, and I found I’d become numb within my fear that the bullet had entered into his abdominal cavity and no matter my attempts, he would not survive this. I steeled myself and went back to my work, attempting not to think of the fact this was my very dearest friend beneath my knife. 

It seemed Holmes had got the bullet out, but at the very rear of the wound within an abscess I removed putrid bits of flesh and scraps of cloth from what he had been wearing when he was shot. 

When I was done, the wound was open from front to back in a long ugly line. Considering the severity of the infection and wound there was thankfully minimal damage to the muscle, enough that Holmes would be confined to his bed for a long while, should he survive the infection itself, but not enough to cripple him. 

If he survived though, he would have an ugly scar. That could not be helped, the infection had settled in too deeply and there was too much necrotic flesh. 

It took me nearly two hours to pack and suture wound and I did so reluctantly, knowing that the infection would continue to rage until the antiseptic and frequent cleaning of the injury flushed it out… if it could. For all I had known at the time the infection could have gone to his blood and he would be dead in a few short hours.

I tried not to think of that possibility, but hardened myself for it just the same.

Wiggins’s stomach held until I’d bandaged Holmes properly and wrapped him in a clean quilt against the violent shivering and once he was covered and appeared to be nothing but a head and bloody lips above the quilt Wiggins sank slowly to sit against the wall with his head in his hands. 

I handed him a glass of brandy and had one myself, feeling somewhat melancholic, remembering the first drink I had as a boy. 

Wiggins coughed and pulled a face but swallowed it down in spite of it. Even considering the fact it was unlikely he had done something of this nature before Wiggins handled it better than I had the first time I witnessed such a thing. I told him so and earned a weak sounding laugh, before we even contemplated moving Holmes back to his bed. 

I cleaned the room again, bundling the bloody bandages and swabs to be burned. That much infection and dead tissue, there was no need to try and salvage them. 

I removed the soiled linen from Holmes’s bed and laid out clean ones and with Wiggins’s help moved him carefully back. 

Wiggins fell asleep on the settee, which I believe was for the best, as Holmes’s condition deteriorated quickly that night and the boy did not need to see my frantic checking of Holmes’s pulse or that I pulled back the blankets and quilts to wash him down because his body was so terribly dehydrated he could not sweat to ease his own temperature. 

Wiggins did not need to see me holding him and begging quietly that he drink something, even a little to ease his thirst. I’d seen Holmes licking the very blood from his lips and had begun lowering drops of water there with a clean bit of cloth, like a nurse maid attempting to coax a premature infant to suckle. 

Holmes rejected the cloth every time I presented it, the weak sealing of his lips the only protest he had the strength to make aside from his shivering, it wasn’t until I caught a stray drop with my fingertip and redirected it to his mouth that I found a solution to that particular problem and for nearly two hours I fed as much water to him as I could in this fashion. 

Wiggins excused himself before dawn, changed back into his own clothing and departed for his work, saying he would send one of the older boys to aid me during the day, I thanked him and sent him on his way with a few coins so he could have a solid breakfast, he showed himself out.

Sure enough, barely two hours later there was a pebble thrown against the window, when I threw up the sash and looked down into the street there stood two children, nearing their middle-teens by the look of them, a girl with cropped dark hair and a boy in a frayed cap with a cleft lip. The girl introduced herself simply as Ara, and the boy was her brother Henri. She pronounced it in the French fashion and gave the universal password Wiggins had mentioned he’d taught the others, ‘A way of tellin’ us all ‘part… Theres some kids out there‘d lie jus’ to get outta trouble… So, alla us know The Word, tha’s ‘ow you’ll know ‘s us.”

I’m not exactly sure how I feel about ‘Moriarty’s a Fathead’ as a byword, but then again I have no say in the matter.

Ara said quite plainly, that Henri could not speak and she was there as his voice only and that there had best be no funny business or her Bennett would have my head.

Later when I enquired as to whom Bennett was, she flushed with pride and threw her shoulders back saying Bennett was her fiancé, a thirteen-year-old who worked as a chimney sweep and was teaching himself to read. He had promised her their own house once he could read well enough to go to school and learn proper mathematics, aside from the equations he used to decide how long it would take him to completely sweep out a floo and clean up the soot left behind, as determined by how many weeks it had been since the owner last had it cleaned, multiplied by how often a fire was kept in that hearth. 

Ara’s Bennett had a mind for numbers it seemed. I congratulated her.

Henri could speak, but the distortion of his mouth made understanding him difficult and he relied heavily on his sister for translation. He was a strong lad and a quick study. With his help I was able to change the sheets on Holmes’s bed while Ara went about preparing tea in a quick and orderly fashion down stairs. I was afraid to think what Mrs. Hudson would do upon her return, to learn someone had been moving things about in her kitchen. 

Ara returned not long later with a tray on which she’d balanced the tea pot and three cups, as well as a plate of rather irregularly shaped cheese sandwiches she’d attempted to cut into triangles. The look of quiet pride on her face at conquering such domestic duties for the first time warmed my heart and I thanked her and drank the tea then tried to get a bit of it into Holmes as well, sweetening it far past my own tolerance knowing the sugar would aid in his recovery, giving his body more to digest than merely water. 

Ara even attempted a weak broth later that afternoon when I sent her and Henri out with enough money to purchase a cut of beef. 

Holmes’s fever seemed less intense and he accepted more tea and water without protest, though when I attempted to provide it directly from the cup he rejected it with a toss of his head. 

Ara and Henri stayed until that evening and I was pleased Ara had produced a fine broth for her first go at it. She had even cut up a few potatoes she’d found down stairs and put in it, making a rudimentary soup. She watched with interest as I smashed a few lumps of potato into the broth to thicken it and after observing me spooning it mostly unsuccessfully into Holmes’s mouth suggested she be allowed to try. 

It was not exactly proper for such a young girl to be in an unwed man’s bedroom, even with her elder brother there, but I was beginning to sicken myself with worry over Holmes’s condition and did not object as I should have. Instead I prostrated myself across the foot of Holmes’s bed to ease the ache in my shoulder and back and promptly drifted off to sleep. 

Wiggins woke me hours later by calling my name from the door. He was not alone, beside him stood a rather shocked and overcome Mrs. Hudson.

I immediately looked to Holmes, who remained as unresponsive as he had been hours earlier and checked his temperature, still too high and his brow was still too dry. Worse though, his breathing was now irregular and I could no longer find his pulse in his wrist, but had to press my fingers to his throat.

He was dangerously dehydrated and unless I was able to get him to drink properly I could not expect him to survive this ordeal.

Mrs. Hudson, bless her, did not question who had been in her kitchen, she went about reheating what little there was left of the weak soup Ara had made and adding more spices and vegetables, proclaiming the stock the child had created useable. 

Wiggins bathed quickly and planted himself on the settee ready if it was required that we move Holmes.

I spent most of that night fighting Holmes’s fever, it grew even more dangerously profound and my fear that he would simply stop breathing became a more pressing reality as twice that night his body became so horribly overheated he experienced convulsions and I was forced to send Wiggins out to my practice to wake the maid and fetch back jars of medicine and boric acid. 

Holmes raved in a mixture of languages, what I could understand seemed to be mindless things, sounds and only half words, most of which pertained to Moran, a pressing ambiguous urgency and fear being the two main sentiments other than weak exclamations of pain.

He tossed his head weakly and completely refused the water from my fingers. His heart struggled to remain beating. Even the blood from his wound was unnaturally dark and thick seeming, appearing to clot the instant it seeped from his body. 

I broke. 

Holmes was dying and I could do nothing to force water and sustenance into him. When he had asked for my help, I had refused him and now he would burn to death from within.

I pulled him up against my chest and pressed one finger between his lips, forcing his jaws apart, and tipped a bit of water into the space between in my desperation.

He choked and coughed and rejected it, so I tried again, sitting him up more completely and trying to make him swallow it, nothing seemed to work, even massaging the length of his throat to make him swallow only resulted in his stomach rebelling and what he’d taken in being expelled.

Mrs. Hudson appeared at my side and re-arranged the sheet around Holmes’s waist and lap to cover his indecency. I have never much before spoken of what a stalwart woman our landlady was. She was unshaken by Holmes’s behaviour the entirety of our years lodging at Baker Street and aside from her mild complaints of his more unusual and destructive tendencies she took Holmes’s peculiarities in stride. Even then, faced with his dire illness and my own consuming worry, she remained steadfast. 

Shaking me from my black thoughts she and Wiggins held Holmes still while I picked the stiches and packing from the wound and cleaned it again more vigorously, perhaps even mercilessly, blocking out his cries of pain because I knew if Holmes were to survive this, I could not even consider that what I was doing hurt him. I had to focus on fighting the infection, once he was well again he would either forgive me for causing him discomfort or he would not. The only thing that mattered to me in those moments was his survival. I had only just got him back, I would not lose him so easily again.

Mrs. Hudson pushed me from the room once I’d re-stitched and bandaged the wound and I collapsed onto the settee giving only a cursory glance to the room to spy Wiggins lying on a makeshift pallet in front of the fire looking back at me in concern. I fell quickly asleep with Wiggins’s eyes on me and woke only a few short hours later to Mrs. Hudson calling my name frantically.

Holmes was in the midst of another convulsion—Wiggins had observed how I’d treated the last one and had pulled Holmes to lie on his side and was supporting his head. We could do nothing but wait for it to end and count the seconds in our minds. 

Once he had settled the tension bled out of the room and I found I could think clearly again. Mrs. Hudson went to fetch clean linins for the bed and Wiggins and I used a quilt to gently carry Holmes down stairs, laying him carefully on the wash room floor I ushered the young man out and set about washing Holmes down with water fresh and cold from the taps. I would have put him in a cold bath if not for his wound, as it was laying cold saturated cloths across his body was the best relief I could offer. He wept openly in pain from it on overheated nerves and I couldn’t stop my own tears from joining his in sympathy. 

In my desperation to bring down his temperature, I remembered seeing Afghan women tending to injured family members and immolated them. I took cold water into my own mouth and passed it to him this way, overjoyed when he seemed to accept it after the third or so try. 

Mrs. Hudson let herself in unannounced—or perhaps she had announced her intent but I had been too focused on sharing water with my friend to notice. I feared she would be scandalized by catching me with my lips against his, but she seemed unaffected—bless her— and relayed the message from Wiggins that he’d left for his work and since she herself had returned, he would come if called and that Cartwright would be in attendance later that morning. Mrs. Hudson also said she had made up a bed for Holmes on the ground floor so there would be no need to carry him up and down the stairs should this process require repeating.

I agreed that would be for the best and gauged Holmes’s temperature for what felt like the hundredth time that evening. It had come down quite a lot, but was still too high for my liking and would be until he was back to his old self. 

I moved him on my own to the bed Mrs. Hudson had prepared and stayed by his side the rest of the day, dozing fitfully with my fingers pressed to his wrist. 

His fever rose again, shortly after Cartwright made his appearance, but it was not as dangerously high as it had been previously and there were thankfully no more convulsions. 

I took up one of the two chairs near the bed after changing Holmes’s bandages again and let myself doze, telling Cartwright to wake me should there be any change in my friend’s condition. 

Cartwright said he would and I was almost instantly asleep. 

Such a peculiar thing, how tired I was when Holmes was the one fighting the battle with death. I merely tried to lend my aid and was very nearly undone with exhaustion while he carried on unerringly. 

Cartwright did not wake me and when I struggled from sleep myself to ask why he had not he said simply that there had been no change that would require my expertise, he went on to say that Holmes’s fever had remained steady. “He acts as if he might wake,” Cartwright said slowly; “He struggles a bit and once I saw he’d opened his eyes, but he didn’t seem to be SEEING anything… More like you’d do if you were asleep.” 

I thanked him and Cartwright took up the other chair, slouching much as Holmes did, over the arm rests, and slipping effortlessly into sleep. 

It was nearing midnight when Holmes’s fever spiked once more, so unbelievably high I knew in my heart that this must be the crisis of it. Either the fever would break, or it would kill him, there was nothing I could do but pull back the covers and bathe him, Cartwright running back and forth from the washroom to refresh the basin with cold water, Mrs. Hudson standing in the hall with a hand clutching her dressing gown closed high on her neck, holding aloft an oil lamp, eyes wide and brimming with emotion. 

Holmes raved, his voice rising and falling erratically, fingers clawing weakly at the linins or my arms in his distress. I was overcome myself, with how fragile he appeared in those hours. Too thin, too pale, too overwhelmed. It was a piteous sight, the great Sherlock Holmes reduced to such a sick helpless creature. 

In those moments, I hated him… I hated how unnatural he was, how hurt and sick and so unlike my friend. I hated that this had happened and that I had been foolish and angry enough to turn him away when he had needed me most.

I hated myself with a passion so intent and fiery it felt as though I were the one being burned alive. I had done this to him as surely as Moran’s bullet… If I had only been able to look past my own wretched emotions I could have saved him from this. 

It was my fault and I shall carry that guilt with me to my grave.

As much as it pains me to write it, I cannot deny that in those moments I wished him simply to die so there would be an end to his suffering. I had seen men survive such rampant fevers and emerge merely shells of humanity, everything that had made them who they are stripped away by sickness and infection. I could not fathom my friend, my dearest friend, trapped in such a state and truly believed it would be a much more suited mercy if he were to perish. 

I had reached the end of my endurance and as he laid there, gripping my hand in his anguish, head tilted back as he gasped for breath I wept for his loss a second time. 

His body arched upward off the bed and held quivering, his thin chest pushed high—and just like that it was over. 

I barely understood what had happened until Mrs. Hudson was in the room, pulling the blankets upward over his body. 

My ears rang and out in the night I heard a cab pass on the street. I barely recognized Mrs. Hudson’s voice until she gripped me by the jaw and shook me. Her eyes were relieved and watery, showing her own exhaustion, “I’ll fetch a few more blankets… Stay with him, Doctor, he’s not out of the woods yet.” 

I turned to him, my heart thundering in my breast, and began weeping anew in my own relief, counting the sparse beads of sweat on his brow and the clicks of his teeth as he shivered. 

I didn’t think, really, but I suppose that’s no excuse. I kicked off my boots and shrugged out of my rumpled waistcoat and collar, climbing quickly into the bed and pulling Holmes against me. There was strength in him yet, as he clung to me, pulling his legs up as if attempting to hide in my arms like a small child. Holmes’s temperature was still too high to be safe, but allowing it to plunge so suddenly when it’s broken could spell death as surely as if it had continued to run rampant. 

Mrs. Hudson returned a few moments later, her arms laden with quilts she’d pulled from the cupboard or even from the trunk she kept in her own rooms, with Cartwright’s help they layered them over Holmes and myself and began a series of trips to and from the kitchen and washroom, bringing tea, and cool water to bathe his brow. We all sighed deeply in relief when Holmes accepted the edge of a teacup and took a drink. We coaxed as much water and tea into him as possible, in those first few hours after I’d ushered Cartwright and Mrs. Hudson out long enough to bathe Holmes properly and change his bandages, I was rewarded by a purposeful push of his hands on my arm as I tried to lift him long enough to fit a shirt over his head. 

He grumbled in a way I was familiar with, that same wordless growl of his voice from when I’d once tried to wake him from a deep slumber. It lightened my heart and renewed my hope that whatever toll this illness had taken on him had not damaged his intellect, or his personality. 

Holmes remained feverish for two more days, but it was nowhere as high as it had been before. Once it seemed to me that he cracked his eyes open and was actually aware of his surroundings, but the moment was fleeting and his eyes closed quickly, as he was at the end of his own endurance. 

Wiggins came on Sunday, Ara with him, as was a thin scrappy looking youth with fiery red hair who could only have been Bennett. His eyes held an amazing intelligence for someone so young and of such a station and he spoke precisely and evenly. Henri it seemed, was attending services with the younger of Holmes’s gang and these four, Cartwright included, had come to ask on his condition. 

Mrs. Hudson took Ara aside and together they prepared a light lunch as Cartwright and myself were thoroughly famished and Wiggins took it upon himself to attempt rousing Holmes enough to have a go at a cup of tea. 

Holmes cracked his eyes open again, glanced about the room and mumbled something about putting out the light before he closed his eyes and was off again. 

Wiggins seemed appeased and smiled broadly the rest of the afternoon. 

Bennett—or John Alexander Bennett, as he introduced himself to me— when prompted, explained his desire to attend the college when he was old enough, and that he’d successfully taught himself to read and write and what mathematics he’d managed to teach himself he found intensely interesting. As time would pass those Holmes’s Irregulars who survived the streets growing up and having children of their own, only Bennett, Cartwright, and Wiggins would remain constants at Baker Street. Wiggins and Cartwright following as much in Holmes’ footsteps as possible, Bennett going on to become a successful businessman, he and Ara welcomed their second child into the world last March. 

Holmes remained in a deep healing slumber for three days more and I stayed at his side for most of it, what time I was not there Mrs. Hudson was and I was collapsed asleep upstairs. At first I feared a relapse of my own, for two days I felt feverish myself and tried to keep from Holmes lest I endanger him further but the bout passed and revived, I applied myself to his care with all my strength.

He woke on Thursday afternoon. I was in a light doze, sitting on the chair by his bed, a book across my knee and became aware that Holmes had turned his head and was looking up at me with a curious expression on his face. There were dark waxy crescents beneath both of his eyes and though his lips were still terribly chapped they no longer appeared bloody. He seemed to be conscious of his surroundings and when I said his name he blinked slowly and attempted to speak, but his throat was much too dry to allow it and he scowled in frustration. 

I found the teapot on the side table, where Mrs. Hudson had left it earlier and though the tea was cold he drank it down. I had to take it away again and warn him that his stomach may reject it, that perhaps it would be wise to see how that settled before he attempted any more. He seemed to agree for his brows bobbed up and he let his breath out in a slow sigh, settling back against the pillows without complaint. 

I observed his silence for a few moments more, then brushed my fingers over his brow, pushing his hair back and calling his name softly. His eyes opened again and he looked up at me. “Holmes, do you remember anything?” I asked. At first he nodded, then shook his head in the negative and sighed. 

“You’ve been very ill… That wound on your side became terribly infected, I worried more than once that you wouldn’t make it—but you seem to have pulled through just by the breadth of a hair…” 

The edge of his lips curled up mischievously and he studied me from beneath his lashes.

“Yes, I know ‘Why ever would you doubt me, Watson’,” I shook my head and returned to my book; “Arrogant fool.”

He hummed in a cracked disused voice that was too entirely pleased with himself. 

“Oh, do shut up, Holmes…”

His grin widened; “My my, John… But, I haven’t said a thing!” His voice was thin but coherent and it eased a knot of tension below my heart. 

“No, but you were thinking it.”

“Oh? Was I… Fancy that!” 

0-0-0 

0-0-0 


End file.
